


Outlet

by Cheylock



Series: Outlet [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Cancer, Cancer-related death, Child Abuse, Embarrassment, Minor Character Death, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-25
Updated: 2012-09-27
Packaged: 2017-11-15 00:58:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/521381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheylock/pseuds/Cheylock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isaac Lahey is eleven years old when Stiles Stilinski gives his Biology presentation. The assignment: pick a disease, any disease, and teach your fellow classmates about it. Stiles goes above and beyond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Disease

Stiles Stilinski is a kind boy, and a smart boy, and a very, very sad boy. His life usually feels like it’s in a state of flux, and he tries so, so hard to keep up with everyone, and with everything, but sometimes people fall through the cracks. More specifically, the person who needs him most falls through the cracks.

Maybe if his life’d been less flux-y, he’d have noticed Isaac sooner.

Maybe Derek Hale wouldn’t have had to bite Isaac to get him on Stiles’s radar.

 

 

Isaac Lahey is 11 years old when Stiles gives his Biology presentation. He knows Stiles’s mom is sick (like everyone else in Beacon Hills), but he didn’t know how bad it was. He’d heard the words “cancer” and “malignant” and “coma” and “non-responsive” on tv before, but they sound different coming from someone who used to give you their chocolate milk during lunch period. Their teacher, Ms. Denver, sits with tented fingers, the tips white with strain, but she looks calm and somewhat interested. Isaac eyes his own flashcards and poster board with a frown-he hadn’t realized that their reports on disease had to be so…detailed. Half of what Stiles is saying slips through the white space between his ears and is lost-the words are too complex, too much too fast for a sixth-grader with focusing problems to process. Only one thing really gets through to Isaac: what “chemotherapy” is. There is no way people actually have to take poison to get better. No way at all.

Isaac is frowning, forcing himself to focus on Stiles. Stiles is quivering at the front of the room, and he deserves to have someone looking at him without looking down on him, deserves to have an anchor somewhere, even if the anchor’s just a scared little kid. Stiles picks up the three-way display with weirdly steady hand; he handles it like it’s made of glass instead of cardboard and opens it like he’s afraid it’s going to shatter all over him. Once it finally unfolds all the way, he steps back, and there is a collective gasp. Many of the girls start to cry. Isaac doesn’t gasp, but he feels hot, fat tears pricking up at the edges of his vision, stinging him, and for about a second he’s sure his dad’ll see and he’ll spend the night in the freezer and his heart speeds up and he suddenly needs to pee but no, no, he’s at school. He’s safe right now. He looks around, hunching in on himself, and tears roll down his cheeks; he knows people will remember this. He feels like some great being’s just tattooed “Isaac Lahey Cries Like A Girl” straight across his forehead. He shudders, tries to set his face to show the resolve he feels: he’s crying over something that matters, and maybe that’s worth the brand.

Stiles gulps hard, looks vaguely confused. Takes a deep, deep breath. Lets it out real slow. Points at the first picture, the bright one of Ms. Stilinski in the kitchen. “This is my mom a year ago. She was totally fine, and really happy, and the doctors said she was healthy.” Stiles’s finger lingers on the corner of the grinning woman’s face, and then drags down to the bottom left picture. “This is Mom a week before the diagnosis. She was tired a lot, and she kept getting headaches. She thought maybe she was coming down with the flu or something, so she went to the doctor. That was about six months ago.” He swallows again, and Isaac can hear a dry little click, even though he’s four desks back and three over from where Stiles is talking. Isaac can hear the clock and people breathing around him and his tears hitting the desk, and he’s confused for a moment before he realizes why it’s so quiet. No one is talking or even breathing hard but Stiles.

Isaac focuses in on Stiles again, and sees his hand drag over to the upper-middle, a picture of the sweet, short-haired woman smiling brightly out through her dim skin, eyes shining even weighed down by large purple bags. “This one is of her about three months ago, after the diagnosis. We found out she had Acute Adult Myeloid Leukemia and a tumor in her head. The tumor was inoperable. That means they can’t do anything about it.” Stiles is shaking now. He’s pinching his mouth down so hard his lips are white. His amber eyes are watery and still for once.

Stiles’s shaking, pale hand drops down and presses the edge of the next picture back against the glue. “This one’s from two months ago. She started staying in the hospital all the time. The doctor said that even though we were aggressive in the treatment, the cancer was still stronger than she was. He said that she’d only last a few more weeks. She couldn’t eat without throwing up, and she kept spitting up blood. Her insides are dying here.” This picture looks like she’s about to fall over a very high ledge. Isaac can see that she’ll be gone soon. It’s obvious in the lines of her mouth. She’s staring out the window, and Isaac is sure that she didn’t know Stiles was looking, especially not that he was taking a picture—she’d have smiled for him. Isaac wants to hug Stiles tight and not let him go, because that’s what he’d want to happen to him if his mom looked like that. Stiles’s breathing’s getting ragged, and Isaac feels thunder in his own chest.

_Just stop. Please just stop. You got an A. I promise you got an A, Stiles, please just sit down, you’re hurting yourself._

Shining amber glances at dripping blue, and Stiles half-smiles. “She was still okay, mostly. Still my mom. But here-” he points decisively at the top-right picture “-well, right before here, really, she kind of…snapped. A lot.” He wilts, like Isaac’s mom’s hydrangeas during the drought last summer. Like Isaac does when his dad gets the belt out. “That happens with people with brain tumors. The tumor’s pressing on things it shouldn’t be, making stuff hard for her brain. She stopped moving on her left side. She yelled a lot. The doctors said she didn’t mean what she was saying, but…well…it was pretty convincing.” Stiles’s eyes are back to their usual swivel, trying to look everywhere at once, barely able to focus on anything. His entire frame looks like it’s buzzing, and Isaac gets scared. Before he was uncomfortable, sure, and he was nervous, and he was afraid, but that’s just his normal state. Now he’s not afraid for himself—he’s afraid for Stiles, and that’s a lot worse.

_Please just come sit down in front of me and talk non-stop and twitch around like a weirdo. Every time you open your mouth, you’re ripping yourself open, I can see it. Please._

But Stiles is resolute. The wavering line that is his mouth twitches helplessly as he touches the picture of his mother in a hospital bed, smooths it against the glue, patting at her bed like he can still smooth down the covers. “This is her right now. Well, not right now, this was last week, but it’s pretty close to where she is now. She…she doesn’t move much, now. And next week, Dad…well, Dad and I…probably mostly me, decided that we were gonna unplug her. The stuff she’s hooked up to-” Stiles’s ever-flailing hands, hands that’ve been so still except to touch the pictures of his mom, fly out and dance in their normal jerky movements all around his head for a moment before he reels them in- “all that stuff around her, that’s all that’s keeping her alive right now, and she’s ‘code blue’d twice now, and they’re pretty sure she’s not in there anymore-” he takes a moment to face his classmates and knock against the sides of his head “-I mean, her brain, her brain’s not working right anymore and even if she wakes up, which she won’t, she’ll be a veggie. And not like broccoli or carrots or anything like that, she’ll be like a baby, that poops and eats and pukes and probably cries but doesn’t learn, and she won’t ever go back to being my mom again. So we’re going to turn her off. Her body at least. We’re gonna kill her.” Stiles’s eyes are defiant, blazing, still a little soggy around the edges but daring anyone in the room to tell him he’s doing bad. Daring anyone to verbalize the question that at least half the people in the room have to be asking themselves- _Why would you want to kill your own mom?_

Isaac feels the thought flicker somewhere in the back of his head for a second before coming to float over his eyes, but he snatches it back and shakes the life out of it. He’s mad at himself for even thinking it. He doesn’t get it—and hopes he doesn’t ever need to—but he’s pretty sure that the guy who still brings everybody Valentines (the cool shiny ones with the superheroes and everything) on Valentine’s Day, even though you’re only supposed to give them to people you _like_ like now—wouldn’t kill his own mom for no reason. There’s got to be something about it he doesn’t understand all the way, so he trusts Stiles. The boy obviously knows what he’s talking about.

So that’s why he’s nodding to himself with tears rolling down his cheeks and his teeth crushing his bottom lip between them when amber meets blue again. Every single ounce of fight drains out of Stiles, like somebody opened a spigot on his back and it all poured out onto the floor. Stiles mumbles something, then clears his throat and says,“It’s not fair.” Then louder, “It’s not fair. It’s not fair! She’s my mom! She’s my mom and she’s got to die and _we have to do it because we’ve gotten too good at keeping people alive!_ ” He takes a great shuttering breath he’s all limp and he’s definitely sobbing and he continues, screaming now.

Isaac isn’t afraid-okay, maybe he’s a little afraid, he’s not good with the yelling—but he understands grief. He does. When his brother Camden died in Iraq this past summer, his dad was like this for weeks. Isaac wasn’t that torn up, which was maybe a terrible thing to think, but he and his brother tried to keep out of each other’s way and that was about it. He feels bad for not feeling bad though, and he hopes that made up for it a little. His dad, though…he went crazy. He drank a lot more and started hitting Isaac more than he had since Mom left when he was nine. She came back before his tenth birthday at least, but still, it was the worst thing. Isaac was terrified that she’d go again and he found her, made her _promise_ that she wouldn’t leave him alone with his dad ever again, and she told Dad that if she found another bruise on Isaac then she’d leave and take him with her. She promised. His dad agreed, but around the last week of summer vacation he’d found the freezer in a garage sale on 3rd Street and he didn’t need bruises to make Isaac hurt and hurt and hurt anymore—

But there it was, he’d zoned out again. He had a bad habit of doing that when people yelled, even in his general direction. He went somewhere else, and the somewhere else was maybe not very good but at least it wasn’t currently happening. Stiles isn’t in the room anymore, and neither is Ms. Denver, and Stiles’s mom looks like she’s staring at him from the cardboard, and he has _no_ idea what he’s supposed to be doing right now. He taps Erica Reyes’s shoulder (the pretty blond girl who half the people in class are afraid of because she has seizures like Caesar, and that’s actually pretty cool to him); she doesn’t even look up from her copy of _The Call of the Wild_ when she tells him, “Pull out your workbook and do pages thirty-through-thirty-six. If you did them already—which you should have, it was homework yesterday—you can talk or whatever. Just don’t be too loud.” She flips her page, like she was still reading while she was talking, but he knows she’s just pretending.

“Erica.” She looks up as he says her name. He pauses for a second, tasting it. They’ve known each other since first grade—as have most of the students in the Beacon Hills school system—and this is maybe the fifth time he’s ever spoken her name out loud. For a second he’s reminded of sour-coated gummy worms, but he pushes on. “What else did Stiles say? I got to ‘too good at keeping people alive’ and then…you know.”

She looks startled, then vaguely affronted, but she nods. Even though there’s a solid block of six people around him—in front of, diagonal to, and behind—Erica’s always the one he asks when he shuts off in class. She’s the only one who doesn’t ask him stupid questions like ‘why’. “Angry stuff about doctors that he probably didn’t mean, lots of crying, and he screamed for about a solid minute. If there’s one thing you can say about Stilinski, he’s got breath control.” She leans down and affectionately pats her clarinet case, like it’s a cat or something, and now it’s his turn to feel affronted.

“Are you _serious_ right now? The guy freaked out in class about his dying mom and all you can say about him is that he has awesome breath control? I think maybe you’re a little too obsessed with band at the moment.” He’s glaring at her and she tries to look uninterested, but he reads the fear in the set of her shoulders and he tries to stab the anger to death inside his head. “Sorry. Sorry. That was mean.” He takes a deep breath and stares hard at his desk, his eyes burning again. He hadn’t even realized he’d stopped crying. “I don’t like making people scared. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not scared!” Erica swats his shoulder and he jumps and flinches away without thinking about it. He tries so, _so_ hard not to look at her but now the tears are coming freaking again and he just has to make sure she’s not rearing back to punch him or something and he sees her looking scared again and ugh can’t he do anything right? “Hey…” Her voice is lowered, like he’s a spooked dog and she’s trying to soothe him, and it makes this heavy rage that tastes like onions and copper broil up in his throat, but he shoves it down, because that’s kind of what he tastes when he says ‘Dad’ now and he doesn’t want to taste it if he doesn’t have to. “Hey, I’m sorry too, okay? I just…I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Isaac’s eyes blaze up and he sits up straighter, angles himself both towards and away from her—shoulders towards, hips away, twisting himself up. “You didn’t hurt me! I just…I don’t like to be touched! That’s all!” He glances around quickly, desperately hoping no one heard their little exchange (doesn’t need Isaac Lahey Gets Beaten Up By Girls on there with Cries Like A Girl), and it looks like he’s got his wish-most people’ve moved their desks together and are babbling about the scene that’d just played out before them. Lydia Martin’s voice is the loudest, and he feels a weird delicious heat in his belly at the sound of her. Then he realizes what she’s actually saying and he kind of wants to ask Erica to punch her in the face for him. Then, the biggest favor he’d ever asked her was for a piece of gum last week, and she’d said no, so that might not go over well.

Lydia: “He totally had like a meltdown! Poor guy—I bet we should all just ignore him for the next couple weeks, let him get himself straight, because really, _that_ —” she gestures with one finger, elegantly outlining the chalkboard and the space in front of it with her finger and then turning back towards the gaggle of girls and boys surrounding her desk “—that was just all-out weird and if he ever says anything like that to me—” she takes a deep breath and flutters her eyelashes “—I’ll never speak to him again. Not that I talk to him much now, but still. What a weirdo.”

Lydia’s Circle of Followers: “Giggle giggle yes master or something.”

Erica’s gone back to pretending to read and he can tell he’s probably hurt her feelings, but he’s not totally sure how to fix it without making it worse, so he just slumps back in his desk and tries not to hate Lydia Martin. He can still remember Lydia pre-third grade, vaguely—a small, quiet girl who read obsessively and extensively and won an AR medal—after all, the only reason he knows half his words is her! Well, her and comic books. Then her parents made her have a birthday party in third grade and it was huge and she invited everyone but the back row--himself, Erica, Boyd (who was not in his class this year) and Jackson. She said she was sorry, but she could only invite 80, and they were the extra four. It set kind of an unfortunate precedent for Isaac; the oddball out who wasn’t even friends with the other oddballs. Apparently the party was awesome, because all anyone could talk about was Lydia Martin. She seemed to liked this, because she made sure she was the only thing they talked about for a while longer.

Isaac decides that tomorrow, when everyone else was avoiding Stiles, he’d finally, finally speak to him. Reach out and make a friend, like his mom kept saying.

But tomorrow comes and goes, and Stiles isn’t at school. He isn’t in class for a solid week, and when he comes back he has bags under his eyes and he doesn’t twitch or talk so much anymore. There are some whispers of relief from Ms. Denver, something about finally taking his ADHD meds as prescribed, but Isaac doesn’t really hear any of it. His mom’d left on Friday, and he’d spent the whole weekend in the freezer. His throat is raspy and his whole body hurts—the thing was big enough to lie down in, but he was afraid. So afraid. He hates the dark and not being able to stand up all the way. He decides that once he had a full week to recover from the freezer, he’d finally, finally talk to Stiles.

There was a six-day block where he’d thought he’d actually make it. Then, on Sunday night, his dad caught him crying.

From then on it was always something. It’d be two days or five days or even six, and then it’d happen again. He’d be stuck in the freezer. He thought he was going to go insane.

It let up during the summer, but that didn’t mean anything. It was still the hardest summer he’d ever endured.

By the time seventh grade started up, he could barely remember the promise he made to himself.

But he  _does_ remember.


	2. Assigned Seats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isaac and Erica discover they have something in common, and it's enough to spark a whole friendship.

Seventh grade year starts on a slope for Isaac. He walks in to first-period English (at of course 12 o’clock because homeroom lasts a century that first day) and sees Erica Reynes (still pretty, still blond, still playing mean) sitting behind Stiles Stilinski, her face buried in the fourth Harry Potter book. She looks about half-way through, but from this angle Isaac can see that she’s not actually reading. She just has her head ducked down so no one can see her staring at Stiles through her eyelashes. Onions and copper and Isaac tries to walk as covertly as possible to the seat beside her. Stiles is busy being a total space case and doesn’t even notice Isaac enter the room, let alone creep down the row four desks to his left and then loop around so he’s coming up right beside Erica. Isaac feels his stomach drop, and he feels like he’s floating, but it’s bad floating…like he’s invisible. Like he’s a ghost. It creeps him out, and he doesn’t know why he feels so disappointed (because seriously, the whole point was to be ignored)…but there it is.

“Erica…” He spits her name as quietly as he can through his teeth, and he tastes sour gummy worms again. He braces himself against the weird fondness that rises up and just continues on, trying not to let his blatantly confusing irritation show. What should it matter that she sits behind Stiles? It’s been his seat since their teachers finally let them pick their own desks but still—why should it make him so angry that Erica wants his spot? Why should it ignite a rage in him that makes him want to grow claws and fangs and use them to rip her to shreds? That threatens to boil through his skin and eat him alive if she doesn’t relinquish her seat like **_right_** now?

She turns to look at him and he feels overwhelming deja vu. “Yeah, Lahey?”

He starts at that a little—he can’t remember her calling him _anything_ , let alone his last name, like she’s the coach of the lacrosse team or something. He swallows hard and forces himself to continue. The rage is held in check by surprise, and he’s equal parts grateful and frustrated. “You’re in my seat.”

She _glares_ at him and he senses she’s feeling the same achingly melodramatic emotions that are roiling through his chest. There’s a positively evil glint in her eye. “It’s the first day of the year. We don’t have assigned seats yet. I can sit anywhere I want.” She’s not even trying to keep her voice down, and Isaac feels his fight-or-flight reflex kicking in—he could go sit somewhere else and steal his usual seat back later, but Stiles might not be in any of his other classes, and the teacher’s probably one of those that are all about staying where you’re stuck—

And there it is. Isaac feels his mouth drop open, but he’s too surprised to do anything about it besides stand there showing Erica the lovely new fillings he got for his birthday two years ago. He makes a weird chocking noise before he realizes that the room is at least half-full now, and he’s just making himself look even more like a freak than people already think he his. He bends himself into the desk beside Erica, and she looks smug for a moment, but Isaac’s not backing down—he’s just covering his bases in case the teacher comes in.

“Swap with me, Erica. Please.” His eyes are as honest as he can make them, but he feels like an animal caught in a trap, and those rarely come off as sincere.

Regardless, Erica’s face softens a little, and she leans towards him. “Isaac, seriously, just this class? Please.” She whispers and her eyes keep flicking to the back of Stiles’s unmoving head and no no no no no no she can’t. She can’t.

“I can’t what?”

Of course he says it out loud. “Um. You can’t sit there.”

Her shoulders hunch up and she tries to make herself look bigger, more intimidating, but all he can see is Donatello from The Ninja Turtles. “Why not? You gonna make me move?”

His chest seizes up at that, but it’s not like there’s anything he can do about it, and he tries not to let it show. It sounds too much like a threat, and it shouldn’t scare him as badly as it does—it’s coming from a 120 pound girl that he could probably break over his knee, even as skinny as he is. Well. Probably. “Seriously, Erica. Just swap with me.”

“Why?” And there’s the stupid, stupid question she’s never asked him before. He tangles his fingers in his hair and tugs the curls a bit, trying to ground himself.

“I…I can’t say it.” He whispers it as fast as he can, shoving the words away from him, and she seems to actually understand him, wonder of wonders.

She doesn’t even hesitate. “Write it down.”

His eyes bug out. He just realized, and she wants him to cement it by putting it to paper? This is the _whole_ reason he hates English class—it makes things real. Concrete. Immovable and unchangeable. Yeah, sure, you can erase stuff and fix it, but the first words you put down will always be there, and maybe always be the truest. It’s not like in Math when you fix a mistake and people can still see it and it’s obvious—that’s fine, and that’s the point of Math. You figure it out. But English isn’t about solving a problem. It’s about…documenting that problem. Exploring that problem in relation to yourself. And you can’t un-write it once its down, no matter how much you erase.

Erica’s snapping her fingers in front of his face. “Hey. Hey space cadet. Come out of your little reprieve and scribble down your oh-so-macho reason why I can’t have this seat, will you?” She’s hovering between irritated and impatient, and it’s obvious she really won’t let it go. Like ever. When Erica Reynes wants to know something, she finds out. That’s probably part of the reason she actually uses words like ‘reprieve’ in every day conversation—when she looks up a word, she puts it to use. It’s something he’s always admired about her.

Maybe that admiration is why Isaac steels himself, tears a scrap of paper out of his notebook like he’s tearing a band-aid off a wound ( _quick as you can and bite your lip hold your breath it won’t hurt a bit_ singsongs in his mind, making him nostalgic for second grade), and scribbles three words in the tiniest text he can successfully form. He then slips it into her outstretched hand and feels vaguely like a drug dealer from one of those mob movies his dad’s been making him watch lately. He bites his lips and jogs his legs up and down as he waits for her to decipher his message; it’s like he and Stiles’ve switched dispositions. Isaac is always the one looking softly into the distance, and Stiles is always the one who’s so absolutely and completely _there_ he tries to take in everything at once. Isaac doesn’t know how he handles it—being completely in his body all the time. It’s terrifying.

Isaac is looking everywhere but Erica, so he doesn’t notice her holding the note out to him until she makes an impatient little groan that is 100% patented Erica Reynes. Once his eyes light on the tiny slip of paper pinched between her middle finger and thumb, he snatches it from her. It’s evidence, and it’ll have to be disposed of as quickly as possible. She can shout it to the rooftops if she wants, but it’ll be a cold day in hell that she’ll have actual legitimate proof. He opens it, to take in the truth one more time, and sees two words underneath his three that seem to suck the breath out of him.

 

_I like Stiles._

**Me too.**

 

He looks up at Erica, stunned for what feels like the thirtieth time today. He hisses, “Seriously?!” at her as quietly as he can, and she looks pleased with herself when she shrugs. She smiles at him and makes tearing motions at him. He shakes his head and maintains eye contact as he pops the slip of paper into his mouth and chews. Her smile becomes a Cheshire-sized grin, and she starts to stand up—presumably to swap desks with him. Isaac cheers internally for this small-yet-enormous victory, and of course as soon as Erica has her (enormous god it’s the first day of class is she lugging rocks around?) bag on her shoulder the teacher walks in.

 

 

When Isaac walks into his next class (Pre-Algebra), he’s not surprised to see Stiles there first. Even when he’s hyperactive he usually goes far beyond the normal parameters of punctuality.

He is rather surprised to see Erica sitting behind Stiles, dragging an orange spiral notebook from the dark depths of her seemingly bottomless and painfully huge backpack. (Really, how can the thing be that big already? We _just_ got our English books, we haven’t _been_ anywhere else yet.) He should’ve expected her to make it a contest, but he really honestly didn’t. She just looked…happy earlier. He doesn’t really know how to react, so he just winds up hovering just inside the door, blinking, scraping skin from his bottom lip with his teeth. Stiles’s eyes slip over him like a breath of cool air and are gone just as fast, leaving him sweating. His heart’s now officially located somewhere in his throat and he’s trying to swallow past it but he just absolutely can’t until he realizes Erica’s gotten up. She makes a sweeping motion at the desk she’s vacating, smile huge and genuine, and Isaac feels a quiver in his chest that has nothing to do with the fact that he gets to sit behind Stiles. Okay, maybe a little to do with that. But still.

He lurches over and crams himself in the desk, beaming at Erica. He can seriously feel the smile screaming out of his face, it’s ridiculous. “Thanks.”

“Hey, I get English. You get Pre-Algebra. I get the next one, you get the one after that, and etcetera. Yeah?”

A weird pitchy giggle is forced out of him. “Yeah.” They smile at each other for a moment before she takes the seat to his left.

When Erica opens her notebook and begins scribbling, he figures the conversation’s over. He pulls out _his_ book— _Cujo_ by Stephen King, not exactly recommended reading, but enthralling anyway—and starts to dissolve into Castle Rock…until that groan calls him back. He looks up at Erica and sees her holding out another slip of paper, this one distinctly larger than the other.

 

**So why do you like Stiles?**

 

Some previously uncatalogued species of horror reaches up from the depths of Isaac’s stomach and twists around his heart. Suddenly the room is too tight, and it’s almost entirely full, and all he can think is _If someone freaking sees this he’ll find out for sure. He’ll find out and he’ll…he’ll laugh. I know it. He doesn’t see me. At all. He’ll laugh._

And then: _Well he just can’t know then, huh?_

He looks up at Erica, fully intent on telling her to leave him the hell alone or not pass notes to him in class or something, anything, so that he doesn’t have to do this. Doesn’t have to solidify all of these shapeless and shady _feelings_ he’s only just acknowledged. _If I’d just kept my head down, all of this would’ve turned out so much differently_ , he’d think later.

But she was smiling so hard, and looked giggly and hopeful and actually happy for once. He can’t end that. If he’s forced to slice open his own heart and show her the muscle underneath, then okay. He can maybe do that. He can maybe be some of her happiness, and maybe make her some of his.

 

By the end of the day he’s practically euphoric, at least by his standards. Since it was the first day, Stiles passed him about thirty-thousand papers in Pre-Algebra and History. Erica was ecstatic about finally getting to sit behind Stiles, even if it’s only two out of seven. The last class Isaac has with Erica is Health, probably the easiest of all until they get into the weird genitalia-related stuff, and they’re allowed to forgo the whole “Stand up and introduce yourself” thing because their teacher, Mr. Croft, is about the laziest person Isaac’s ever seen. Erica sits beside him even though Stiles isn’t in the class and talks to him for basically the whole thing. Well, talks _at_ him. He’s still too stunned by this turn of events to fully grasp most of what she’s saying, and he feels like a bit of a dick and tries harder every time he realizes he’s drifting off, but Erica doesn’t seem to mind much. He thinks the fact that he’s willing to listen to whatever she feels like saying and genuinely wants to at least partially makes up for the fact that he can’t force himself to pay attention.

For once he looks upon writing with something other than horror, because yeah, it makes things permanent, but maybe that’s _good_. If he zones out, half of what she says isn’t lost—it’s just waiting for him to read over it again. They scribble back and forth all through the rest of Pre-Algebra and all through Art and all through History and hell, they’d probably pass notes during P.E. if they had it together. He smiles and it kind of hurts, how good he feels, because he has to go home. The thought slaps his brain back into his body and he realizes that he’s about to miss his bus, which would be completely pathetic because he’s not standing three feet away from the just-closing doors or anything.

He skitters over and jams a hand in-between the closing bars, yelping but not moving. It has the desired effect—the door pops open with a curse.

“Damn it, Isaac, will you just get on the fucking bus when you get to it? You don’t have to stand there and contemplate my big beautiful cheese wagon like it’s some kind of lizard out to eat you. Shee-it.”

Isaac gives Ms. Linda his most apologetic smile while cradling his hand and ferreting onto the bus. “Yes ma’am. Sorry. Long day.”

“Idn’t it always. Siddown, kiddo.”

He and Ms. Linda’d grown accustomed to each other last year, and even though she was loud and boisterous and she yelled at the kids to “Shaddup there, Jeee-zuhs ya’ll, I’m trinna drive here!”, he liked her a lot. She was big, and she was tough, but she was also really nice as long as you were properly apologetic when you held her up.

Which Isaac almost always was.

He worms his way down the narrow isle, fully prepared to take one of the less-desirable seats near the front of the bus, but amid the cacophony that by definition was the bus atmosphere, he hears his name.

His head swivels up and he skids his eyes over about a third of the bus before he sees her.

“Erica?” He climbs back to her seat (the very back one by the emergency exit!) on pure instinct, only letting himself think for a second that she could outright tell him to piss off. He forces the feeling, like bile and soap and maybe icewater down as far as it’ll go. _She called my name. She wouldn’t call my name if she didn’t want me to sit with her._ When he gets there her huge backpack is occupying the space beside her, but before he can curse his poor judgment, she picks it up (with great difficulty) and hoists it into her lap. Then she pats the seat beside her.

“I’ve decided we’re gonna be friends, okay, Isaac?” Her eyebrows say “fearless” but she’s mercilessly twisting the strap of her backpack. Isaac can practically hear her heart fluttering in her chest—she’s freaking terrified. Isaac feels himself smile.

He sits smoothly and plops his own backpack into his lap. “Okay.”

She smiles, and it’s something that makes everything seem like it really is okay. “Okay. Awesome. But this can’t be like a ‘we have class together so we’re friends’ type deal, okay?”

He feels his mouth twist down without warning. “Um. There are terms and conditions to this friendship? Do I have to sign a contract?”

“You know what, yes!” Erica’s smile morphs into a fierce grin and Isaac’s insides tremble a little. “That’s an awesome idea! I’ll figure out the whole thing tonight—any specific clauses you think I should write in?”

Isaac just stares at her. How’d he get himself into this?

 

 

 

Erica’s stop is before his, so Isaac gets the window seat for about four minutes. He leans his head on the cool glass and watches the world rush past, trying to lose himself in the vibrant shouts coming from the front of the bus, but he feels himself sticking uncomfortably inside his head in a way he hasn’t since he was little. He can’t make himself float away.

He has an anchor, and he’s not sure if he likes it.


End file.
